Bloomberg Recognizes National Bow Tie Day

Bloomberg editor-at-large and host of Bloomberg SurveillanceTom Keene is a bow tie devotee. On August 28, which was National Bow Tie Day 2014, he invited Michael Alter, CEO of The Tie Bar, on to his show to explain why this type of neckwear is gaining so much traction.

While some of the other show guests weren’t as excited, Keene and Alter shared some great reasons why to love the neckwear and its holiday:

Sales have doubled in the past few years.

Famous men like Winston Churchill, Manolo Blahnik, and Karl Lagerfeld wear them.

There’s been a shift to more formal menswear, and bow ties help gents stand out.

The price point of quality ties has come down so that one can now purchase one for $15 – $25 that rivals one bought at a high end department store.

One can mix their neckwear up meaning that they don’t have to wear one every day.

Wearing ties help give people confidence when they leave home and go to work.

Coming out of the 2007/2008 global recession, a lot of people are searching for work, and more formal wear helps them stand out well in interviews.

Although some prominent men aren’t wearing any neckwear during some occasions, they do wear something around their neck most of the time.

Keene asks about mistakes, and Alter suggests that people think that they can tie their own with their first one. Thus, he suggests a pretied option. I respectfully disagree; one should tie their own.

Alter and Keene agree that a major mistake many men make is that they wear their ties too wide sometimes with the back blades wider than the front ones. I must admit that is a mistake I sometimes make, and I’m trying to rectify that.